"Simon Hawke - Wizard 4 - The Wizard of Rue Morgue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

were anxious to learn who had been present at the party. They showed him several
photographs. One of those they showed him was Jacqueline's.
He had not even known her name at that point and when the police had seen him
hesitate on seeing her photograph, they asked him if he recognized her as someone he'd
seen at the party. Without really knowing why, he told them no. As an artist, he said, he
merely found her face quite fascinating. He asked them who she was. Her full name,
they told Max, was Jacqueline Marie-Lisette de Charboneau Monet.
They told him that she was a witch, a talented adept with an extensive dossier at
most of the police agencies of Europe, as well as at the Bureau of Thaumaturgy and the
I.T.C., the International Thaumaturgical Commission. She had been arrested scores of
times, under suspicion for crimes ranging from fraud to grand larceny, but she had
never been convicted. She was, they told him, one of Europe's most successful and
accomplished thieves, and it was rumored that she had a link with a man known only
by the name of Morpheus, a deadly international assassin.
Max had been astounded. He had heard that such people existed, but he had never
actually met anyone like that before. The police were certain that Jacqueline was
responsible for the theft of the paintings, but they had only circumstantial evidence,
merely the fact of her presence at the party. There was no proof. They thanked him for
his assistance and departed, leaving Max wondering if he would ever run into her
again. Then several days later, he came home to find her waiting in his studio.



10
 If he still wanted to paint her, she had told him, she would be willing to sit for
him, but only under several conditions. She would not pose nude and the painting
would be only of her face. Furthermore, he was not to tell anyone that she had ever sat
for him and he was to sell the painting to her the moment it was finished. It was not to
be displayed. It was to be a present for a friend and he could name his price. Amused
more than irritated by these demands, he had named a truly outrageous figure, even for
an original Max Siegal. She had readily agreed to it.
It had been the beginning of what became a very close and intimate friendship. It
was a relationship unlike any that Max had ever had before. They eventually became
lovers, but it was months before that happened and when they finally did become
physically intimate with each other, it was not the sort of grand, yet ephemeral passion
that Max had experienced so many times before. They went to bed as friends, as a
logical extension of their warm and affectionate feelings for each other. They loved
each other, but they were not in love, a subtle distinction that, perhaps, only the French
could fully appreciate.
Jacqueline loved someone else, but Max understood that it was an unrequited
passion and he soon came to suspect who that other person might be, though they never
spoke of him by name. As for Max, he was thoroughly burned out on passion. It had
brought him nothing but pain, problems and frustration. He told her that if he had slept
with even half the women who claimed that they'd been intimate with him, he would
have been hospitalized long ago for sheer exhaustion. Jacqueline had laughed and told
him that if she had committed only half the crimes she was accused of, she would be
one of the richest women in the world. He always found an ease with her that he could
not find with anybody else. He hadn't heard from her in months and he missed her
terribly. He seemed more in control of things when Jacqueline was around.
As he drank morosely, he mused about what his life had become since that fateful